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Challenge
Appearance In civilian attire, Matilda Kepler is an upscale, yuppie teenager with a preppy, sporty fashion sense. As Challenge, she initially wore a full body white spandex morphsuit with silver and teal features. After she decided that she was serious about superheroing, she upgraded to a leather zip-up suit and a mouthless cowl. The teal glyph on her costume stands for "Challenge." At least, that's what PInterest told her. Powers * Heightened physical abilities: While Matilda holds back on her athletic abilities while out of costume, she is an olympic-level athlete in most respects. * Supernatural senses: an eidetic memory for movement. Challenge has always been able to analyze and replicate almost any physical movement after seeing it performed. * Impossible mobility: flawless acrobatics. Since Challenge was discouraged from using her athletic/superhuman abilities throughout most of her childhood she has developed a special penchant for acrobatics and gymnastics. * An adolescence of other pursuits:'' ''Matilda has put countless hours of boundless energy into non-superheroic activities. She has impeccable penmanship, she is a Halcyon Gold Scout, she gets straight A’s, she bakes fantastic cupcakes. If it’s a skill a suburban girl might have encountered, she has likely mastered it. Background Growing up in the suburbs of Halcyon City, Tilly Kepler always felt like the heroes were somewhere else. Even as she developed athletic abilities that were far beyond her peers and performed inexplicable feats of strength and dexterity with ease, it was always clear that "super" was a word that was used to describe other people. She just got lectures about how "girls don’t hit" and "make sure you pass to your teammates" and "it’s not ladylike to pick up the car." So she poured her boundless energy and determination into other areas. She grew up as a top student, a favorite among her classmates and teachers, a Halcyon City Gold Scout, and president of seemingly every club at her school. But damn, did she still want to punch bad guys in the face. When her family moved into Halcyon City proper two years ago, she had no problem fitting in at Fredericks H. Big High School. She quickly found her niché among the popular, preppy crowd, but still felt like “super” only applied to people with steel skin and eye lasers. But as she got bored of the "challenges" of JV soccer and precalculus, Tilly finally decided to don a mask and become the superheroine Challenge. Initially, a fear of failure and rejection by her peers led Tilly to keep her identity a secret. Over time her friendships with members of the Big Team and the regular course of adventuring led to her identity becoming increasingly public. This combined with a frustration that she was losing some of her perceived clout as the school’s Queen Bee spending so much time as Challenge led to Tilly’s decision to publicly reveal her identity via social media during May of her Sophomore Year, aiming to no longer to prove herself as capable but to establish herself as an icon. Season 2 History On T-Day, Matilda was at the Fredericks H. Big school dance taking pictures for the yearbook. During the dance, she took pictures of an intimate moment between Gwen and Olivia. Thinking that these pictures were endearing and not something to to be kept secret, Matilda shared the pictures with her friend Gabbie Monroe. Gabbie, in turn, shared the pictures with the supervillain Thorne. It is unknown what Thorne intends to do with these pictures. Early on in her career with the Big Team, Challenge was traumatized by the vents of “Silencio es Oro” where the villain Silencio killed the scores of mutilated homeless children and adults she had been fighting against. The Team has since brought down Silencio and her grief over this incident is currently latent. While a faction of the team was off on the Apocalypse Sonata mission, Gwen entrusted Challenge with her journals and the title of Team Secretary. Challenge interpreted this as having some degree of responsibility for the team leading her to feel like she had failed when the next few weeks led to Rekken regenerating, Cyclone getting hospitalized, and Rhiannon going missing. During this time, Tilly dedicated more and more of her time to her life as Challenge, causing her previously precious little to suffer. Her friendship with Gabbie Monroe became more adversarial, a number of her favorite school activities were cancelled, she lost some of her leadership roles, and her internship was on thin ice. Afterwards, Challenge continued to come into her own as a member of the Big Team, including a dramatic unmasked moment wherein she used The Magna’s shrink ray to subdue the wayward former hero Atomica and stare down a division of GREY soldiers and an incident where she and Lancelle combined forces to subdue one of the infamous Chimera’s heads. Challenge has made a point of demonstrating that the Big Team can get the same or better results than other more zealous groups with less collateral damage. Challenge was a critical part of taking down GREY’s martial law systems in Halcyon City, although this came with the cost of introducing the Steel Spirit Alpha AI into the city’s defense system. Tilly feels guilt and responsibility for the brief window where Steel Spirit Alpha took over and used the city’s defense systems to fire upon protestors. While she has partially atoned for this by continuing to pursue Steel Spirit Alpha since the initial incident, she has become incredibly cautious about making sure that her thirst for adventure doesn't create larger problems. Challenge developed a crush on Freedo over the course of her service with the Big Team. While they had an antagonistic relationship early on, Challenge delighted in any opportunity to show up Freedo by rescuing him. She finally revealed her identity to him on Groundhog Day and the two of them eventually kissed after heavy hinting from Gwen. He disappeared from the team shortly after, leaving Tilly with mild abandonment issues. At the end of Season 2, Challenge's adventures brought her down to Molecyon City where the members of the Fredericks H. Big High School basketball team are, for some reason, revered as idols. During her first trip into the Mole Kingdom, she and the team defeated the Moles' chosen heroes in a game of basketball earning the respect of the people and an audience with King Demolio. In a subsequent adventure she revealed her identity as Matilda Kepler, beloved retired point guard of the FHBHS Beavers, leading to her becoming an idolized leader amongst the Moles. Season 3 History The media has picked up on Challenge as being a particularly prolific young hero with one publication even proclaiming her to be the next Cyclone. In the lead up to her Sophomore year prom, Challenge made the decision to publicly reveal her identity over social media. This decision was arrived at because of a combination of feeling secure in her status as a successful hero and wanting to generate buzz around herself. Journal Entries Season 2 Season 3 Category:Characters Category:PC Category:Challenge Category:B-Verse